Certain beverage preparation machines use capsules containing ingredients to be extracted or to be dissolved; for other machines, the ingredients are stored and dosed automatically in the machine or else are added at the time of preparation of the drink.
Most coffee or other beverage machines possess filling means that include a pump for liquid, usually water, which pumps the liquid from a source of water that is cold or indeed heated through heating means, such as a heating resistor, a thermoblock or the like. Such filling means are usually controlled via a control unit of the machine, typically including a printed circuit board with a controller.
For allowing the user to interact with such machines, for providing operation instructions to the machine or obtaining feed-back therefrom, various systems have been disclosed in the art, for instance as mentioned in the following references: AT 410 377, CH 682 798, DE 44 29 353, DE 202 00 419, DE 20 2006 019 039, DE 2007 008 590, EP 1 302 138, EP 1 448 084, EP 1 676 509, EP 2 085 000, EP 08155851.2, FR 2 624 844, GB 2 397 510, U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,377,049, 4,458,735, 4,554,419, 4,767,632, 4,954,6975,312,020, 5,335,705, 5,372,061, 5,375,5085,731,981, 5,645,230, 5,836,236, 5,959,869, 6,182,555, 6,354,341, 6,759,072, US 2005/0154644, US 2007/0157820, WO 97/25634, WO99/50172, WO 2004/030435, WO 2004/030438, WO 2006/063645, WO 2006/090183, WO 2007/003062, WO 2007/003990, WO 2008/104751, WO 2008/138710, WO 2008/138820 and WO 2009/016490.
US 2005/0154644 very generally discloses a product container, such as a vending or fountain machine, for supplying purchasable products of any kind such as tickets, music, pictures and digital content. The machine is connected wirelessly to an external network for communicating with a content server. Information retrieved from the content server may be displayed to a consumer and/or used to identify an item selectable by the consumer, such as a free item receivable by the consumer after purchasing a product and/or a purchasable item such as tickets, music, pictures and/or digital content.
WO 2009/016490 discloses a beverage dispenser having different beverage modules connected to a control unit with a graphic user interface (GUI) displaying automatically re-arrangeable virtual buttons. The control unit is re-programmed via a network to modify the operation of the modules, in particular the user interface, and for exchanging information about the operation of the machine.
EP 1 302 138 discloses a beverage machine connected to a network. The machine is arranged to communicate with a distant server to carry out diagnosis of the beverage machine and to update the machine's control software via the network.
EP 2 085 000 schematically discloses a coffee machine that has a coffee preparation module coupled via a controller to a user-interface and to a network interface for an external network. The machine further includes a sensor for sensing food components used by the coffee preparation module, the sensor being coupled to the controller so that responsive information may be retrieved from the network regarding the food component sensed by the sensor and then presented to the user. The responsive information retrieved from the network may be used to reprogram (update) the coffee machine to alter the coffee brewing process, i.e. alter the operation of the coffee preparation module via the external network, especially when the food component is new. The external network may also be used to avoid complex reprogramming of the coffee preparation module by downloading user-preferences and parameterize automatically via the network the coffee preparation module.
Beverage preparation machines that can be integrated in a network such as the internet are well known. Typically, such a network integration allows remote control or remote software upgrading of the beverage preparation machine, e.g. as described in the above references.
However, networked beverage preparation machines are exposed to malware and other unsuitable distant parameterisation that may completely upset their configuration and lead to safety or integrity problems, especially hardware problems. For instance, the control of the beverage's heater or pump may be disturbed leading to destructive overpowering or to unsuitable powering which degrades the quality of beverages prepared with such machines. Moreover, this kind of interference may occur silently, i.e. without the user's knowledge until it is too late or without the user realizing it all when the quality of the beverage preparation is merely degraded by such inappropriate interference.